Outlook 2010

Outlook 2010 Social Connector ProgID for Facebook

Today, I was investigating the management and control of the Outlook Social Connector via Group Policy, using the Office 2010 ADM/ADMX files from Microsoft.

Two of the settings of interest for the Outlook Social Connector are the ability to control which social connectors are displayed, and which are automatically loaded without user interaction. Whilst looking online, a Microsoft Forum thread appeared in my results with the ProgID for some of the available connectors, however they were missing a big one – Facebook.

Looking in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT registry hive on my machine, where I have the Facebook connector installed, I found it, so here is a list of the currently available Outlook Social Connector ProgIDs which can be used (semi-colon seperated) in the Group Policy Management Console to configure the behaviour.

SharePoint – OscAddin.SharePointProvider
SharePoint –
OscAddin.SharePointProvider.1
LinkedIn –
LinkedInSocialConnector.LinkedInSocialProvider
MySpace –
MySpace.OSC
Windows Live Messenger – OscAddin.WindowsLiveProvider
Facebook – OscAddin.FacebookProvider
Facebook – OscAddin.FacebookProvider.1

I hope this helps you all.

In Your Face Out of Office in Outlook 2010 Technical Preview

As most people will know from various sources, I’m Out of the Office from work at the moment on paternity leave with our new baby Layla.

As an obvious result, I’ve got Automatic Replies enabled in Outlook to warn people I am Out of Office. I have Outlook open all of the time as I check my POP3 email accounts in it, but today I saw a menu appear in Outlook to warn about the Out of Office for the first time.

Outlook2010OutofOffice

This is a great step on from previous implementations of the Out of Office namely because (having fallen victim myself once or twice) it’s fairly easy to leave it on when you get back into the office and forget about it.